


Youngest

by deskclutter



Category: The Sandman
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Gen, implications of self-harm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-29
Updated: 2012-10-29
Packaged: 2017-11-17 06:50:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 952
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/548780
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deskclutter/pseuds/deskclutter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Despair: her siblings, her craft, her life after the death of Morpheus. (commentfic for streussal, prompt: Despair and Daniel Dream are Endless 2.0!)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Youngest

In some ways, Despair once told Delirium, it's really Despair who is now youngest, and Delirium ought to accept that.

"Um, no," said Delirium, after some thought. "I won't give it to you."

Despair told her that truth can't be given; truth simply is.

"I think that's silly," Delirium declared. "Truth will just, um, have to do what I want."

Despair was confused, but when she told Desire, her twin had only laughed and told her that it mattered very little anyway. "We'll let her think she's got away with it, sweet twin," confides Desire. "Shall we plan our revenge? Come, now, what about a game...?"

 

Desire can't do things by halves. Despair knows that about her twin. In some ways, all the Endless are so -- larger than life and spilling out from reality to inhabit fiction too. It is Dream, of course, cold and austere and distant, who indulged Desire most in this behaviour.

Once upon a time, all the Endless did so too. They were grand and tragic -- it ended with Despair, as many things ended that terrible day. So the Endless changed, except the two who could not, and the most changed of all was Despair, for the birth of life does not so easily circle around from life's end, not even for the Endless.

All the Endless had lessened that day, and from that day, Despair, successor, has learnt to make herself small.

 

The thing about Despair is that she can't always be grand and exciting. There are days in which she is, and poets write long, overwrought stanzas to her corpulent beauty and her terrible depths. Those are her brilliant days.

But there are days in which she is off, and those are days in which all the things are grey. They are days when it is a triumph simply to throw back the covers and emerge from bed.

Strip away the mirrors, the hooks, and Despair has shrunk. She is small and tired and ugly -- that is her craft, and she is proud of it.

 

One day, Dream dies, and the Endless are changed again. Despair is distraught, for all that it refuses to give Dream the satisfaction -- Despair knows despair, but she also knows her twin; Desire is a chameleon and adaptation is second nature to one who plays as many high-stakes games as Desire does.

Dream's new incarnation does not attend his predecessor's wake. Despair remembers when she had wandered through the mirrors, thumbing at her new ring of office and pricking new blood. It was strange, learning to be alone.

"But you are not alone, sweet sister," Desire-in-her-memory pronounces once again, and Despair knows the truth of that deep in her blood, deep in her bones, scattered and mapped across the essence of Despair.

 

He sees her crossing his realm. "Hello, my sister," he greets her, familiar and not quite familiar. He regards her steadily, and says, "I suppose I am the youngest now."

The statement startles Despair.

"No," she replies. "But neither am I; you take that up with Delirium yourself."

And, surprise of surprise, she startles a laugh from her new brother. "I shall take your advice," he promises. They watch the fish swim in mid-air, and he invites her to advise him in the throne room; it is Moon's day and there is a new delegation.

"No," she tells him. "I won't encroach on your sovereignty." And because she feels that she does like him, she warns, "Were I you, I'd not ask Desire that.

Dream watches her with wary eyes, accepting, but curious. "Is Desire not your twin?"

"My twin, whom I love best," affirms Despair. "And that is how I know to advise you against the thought. Ask your ravens, brother, if you don't believe me -- and I take no offence if you don't."

 

To her own surprise, Despair finds that she visits Dream more often than their sister Death.

"She still mourns the departed," Desire opines. "Catch me wasting my time on _that_. And you were never close, so I know you don't. I don't care about the others."

Despair brushes her ring harmlessly against Desire's cheek, which is an old sign of affection between them. "Are you jealous, that I see our brother so often?"

Desire grins, sharp as glass. "Only if you love him more."

"No," says Despair. She has wondered before how she would cope if Desire died. Her chest heaves in memory. "There would be nothing left of me if not for you, my twin."

"Foolishness," dismisses Desire. "You are Despair. You are everything without me." Despair looks away, unconvinced. Desire reaches for her chin and meets her with a piercing gaze. "Together, of course, we are twice that." Desire smiles, almost soft. Despair can see the hidden knife's edge. Oh, she does love her twin.

 

Dream, like her, likes smaller arts. "I have theories of how to make great dreams and nightmares; they spin and tumble like constellations," he confesses once. "But they remain out of reach and abstract. I cannot fathom actually making such a thing as the Corinthian or a Fiddler's Green."

Instead, he crafts little dreams -- the desire for a favourite food, the dream of a homesick person sitting at home, finding an item of clothing that fits neatly into every aspect of social interaction.

"It is no bad thing," she tells him in return. "I do the same, myself."

"It's a change," Dream says. He worries, though he never tells her that.

"That's no bad thing," she tells him. "That is your purpose, is it not?"

Dream considers. "Perhaps so. Nevertheless, purpose or no, that is what I am."

"Yes," says Despair. "And what you are is Dream."


End file.
